


Nobody ever told me I'd have to want to be a mother

by fictionisthebetterreality



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Abortion if you squint, Depression, Grief, Mentions of Suicide, Seriously this isn't a happy fic, dont ask me why i wrote it, idk - Freeform, mentions of drug use, post-partum depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 18:36:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14754128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionisthebetterreality/pseuds/fictionisthebetterreality
Summary: Mother:1. to bring up (a child) with care and affection.2. to give birth toNobody ever said being a mother was easy.They say it takes work, and sacrifice, and devotion - in a way you've never experienced.They say its loud noise and sleepless nights and worry, all the time, about things you can't control.But above all, they say, it's worth it.Sometimes, though, people just aren't made for it.





	Nobody ever told me I'd have to want to be a mother

**Author's Note:**

> Read the tags before this one, people, I don't think there's an actual happy moment in this thing. Wanted to do a FO4 fic for ages, and this is what I turn up with, oops.

She never meant for this to happen.

She’d woken up, 200 years fresh out of her cryogenic grave, with the image of her dead husband forever burned into her brain (and maybe some other stuff burned out of it) and she’d _wailed_ \- wailed like the baby she’d seen taken away.

But the baby – that small human barely old enough to know what life _was_ – how does that baby compare to a lifetime with her soulmate cut short?

And yet.

Time after time after time.

“Oh, you’re trying to find your baby?”

Not-

“Trying to get revenge for your husband, shot between the eyes like he was nothing, like he wasn’t–“

No. All anyone cared about was that damn baby.

And maybe she’d never been ‘normal’, never been the perfect little housewife with the good manners and the shiny smile and the mothering instincts that meant she didn’t keep awake till four in the morning rocking a baby that didn’t feel like  hers, not really, not at all-

But she’d had _Nate_ , and it had been _good_.

 

Nick Valentine listens to her tale and launches straight into the plan to find Kellogg, and she feels relief, for the first time since she woke up, that someone _gets it_ -

\- and then he talks about the institute, and finding her child, and it all crumbles again.

She is a mother _only_ in the most basic, physiological way, but even she knows enough not to say as much out loud.

(Her mind tickles with dark thoughts, fantasises about saying it out loud, after all, this is a new world, people might be more understanding than you think-

\- then she imagines the looks of horror, the ones she got before, after the first time, and the clean white walls and needles-

\- and she locks that thought down, shoves it in a tiny box wrapped in chains).

She knows Kellogg is the one she wants, the one she needs, and she’ll let Valentine keep using her for his poorly disguised quest of self-vengeance as long as he likes if he just _leads her to him_.

 

They find him eventually, holed up in Fort Hagen, the once proud building now cracked and slumped, and she has to stop herself from seeing Nate around every corner, from hearing his laugh echo down the halls as he roughhouses with his team while she laughs and teases-

She’d considered Kellogg’s death for a long while, given it more thought than anything else since she woke up, and now she remembers - remembers the feeling of more blood than she knew bodies could hold, remembers her hands hurting but not stopping, remembers looking up and realising that robots can look scared just like humans, when they want to.

 

She should have stopped there.

She should have gone back to Sanctuary and visited Nate one last time, with the muzzle of a gun between her lips and memories of their lives in her head.

But she’d been so _tired_.

Too tired to do anything but nod and agree and follow Valentine when he strides out into the commonwealth in search of her baby.

Her baby.

Like that mattered, anymore.

 

 

And now she’s here.

“Mom? Did you find a camera while you were out there? It’s okay if you didn’t…”

She rummages in her bag, finds the battered old polaroid that had been half crushed under a mutant hound’s body, gives it over without a word.

Still, he beams, leaning in to give her a hug, dashes off.

She never meant for this to _happen_.

The months between Kellogg and a great big fireball erupting into the sky are hazy. She knows she didn’t have the resolve to make the trek to Sanctuary by herself, followed Valentine around the Commonwealth for a year or so instead, finding clues, running into dead ends, a passive participant in an active investigation.

People looked at her with pity, with sympathy, with scorn.

 

_Poor dear, lost her baby, now she’s trying to find the institute._

‘Find the institute’ - the same way people used to say ‘waiting for the war to end’.

 

_Find the institute? Fool’s errand, that. Quicker they get eaten by a mirelurk the better, I say._

_I heard she found that mercenary, Kellogg, killed him in revenge for taking the little one._

_You’re all wrong,_ she wanted to say. _I’m not a vengeful mother. I’m a grieving wife. I don’t_ care _about the institute – just let me go home. Let me be with Nate._

People took her appearance for exhaustion, her lack of words for weakness, the way she would lie awake all night, every night, as a sign of her inability to rest knowing her baby was out there somewhere. She didn’t have the energy to correct them, just like she didn’t have the energy to resist the way people pushed her to follow the trail, find the institute – she doesn’t know if they wanted her to blow it to pieces, but she did it anyway, watching too-bright flames lick at the corners of the sky with something like relief.

 

But now she has her baby back, only not a baby anymore, and the crushing heaviness never really lifted but now it’s joined by the _guilt_. She’s surrounded by people who think they know her, see her as a saviour and a mother and countless other things she’s not. Occasionally she’ll give voice to those realities (usually when Hancock and his chems are around) but people hush her, assume she’s being humble – as if she’s ever been _that._

The hole in her chest where Nate was seems to grow more painful everyday - but this is her life now. Exhausted by the very concept of it, and too shackled by misplaced guilt and over-whelming disinterest to do anything about it.

 

What else was her life going to be like without Nate, anyway?

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos/comments very appreciated bla bla  
> First Fallout fic, played around for ages with the idea of Nora not connecting with the baby/not wanting to be a mother/ doing it for Nate etc etc, so thought I'd put ideas into words and see what happened, so there you are (wrote this in about an hour and a half with minimal editing so any mistakes are on me).
> 
> (But seriously, kudos and comments make my day, please leave some!)


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